


Fool Me Once

by MercuryMapleKey



Category: Don't Starve (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, POV Second Person, Unreliable Narrator, potentially onesided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-06 21:46:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13420287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryMapleKey/pseuds/MercuryMapleKey
Summary: It's not like you've never made a mistake before, but you're pretty certain that this is entirely his fault.





	1. It's a Fluke

**Author's Note:**

> Ha. Hahahahahaaha. Hahha. 
> 
> This probably has another part to it.  
> I'm new here. And you know, sometimes, when you're new to a ship. You just need to write something as an anchoring point. To help you look at the dynamics. To fully wrap your arms around it. I'm wrapping my arms around it.

The mail should have arrived today. You leave early to pick it up and hardly notice how the clouds that were threatening rain last evening have cleared until you’ve reached the path that meets up at the bottom of the hill to take you into town. It’s going to be a nice day, but the weather is the furthest thing from your mind as you step into the post office that lies just outside the town. You’ve been waiting for these parts for over a week now.

It’s a young man behind the counter who fetches your parcel for you. He’s worked at the post office for more than a year, but despite how often you ship in components for your various inventions you can never seem to remember his name. It’s just as well, you’ve come to suspect that he believes you’re a little unhinged (which isn’t exactly an uncommon rumour in this town, but it’s not true either).

 _“You look like you’re good spirits today Mr. Higgsbury.”_ When the kid returns from the back room he’s got a large package with him. He taps the side of the box knowingly. _“Got a new contraption in the mix?”_

You smile back in reply. Not just because it’s the polite thing to do, but because he’s right. _“I’ve hit a real breakthrough this time. Keep an eye out for my name in the newspaper.”_

You don’t particularly have the time or the want to explain it to him, but he seems amused all the same as you pay the charge and leave with your goods. That’s pretty typical for this town, but what they don’t realize is that science is a systematic procedure of trial and error, and this time… This time, you’ve really caught on to something substantial.

Thinking back, you can’t even really remember how it happened. Just another frustrating night in the lab, then a voice on the radio, and then, overwhelmingly, a full cascade of all the secrets of the universe you’d always wanted but never known how to achieve. That had been the only thing that mattered at the time. It was the only thing you remember. Well, that and his voice – cultured and rich and a little bit intriguing…

But the science, the science is what’s important to you. You and Maxwell are on the brink of a true discovery, innovation unlike the 20th century has ever seen. It’s a device for transportation, not like a train or aeroplane, but real instantaneous transportation. At the cellular level. You are a genius, and to his credit Maxwell seems to know what he’s talking about most of the time too. You’ve been working on this project for weeks now together, through sleepless nights and coffee fueled mornings, and now with the last of your components in from delivery the end is finally in sight!

By the time you make your way back home, past the rickety picket fence that you really should repair and up the cracked cobblestones, you’re already giddy with excitement. You make a beeline for the attic immediately, announcing your return as you do. Maxwell’s never too far away from the radio these days – or whatever he’s been using to communicate to you through it – and he must hear the passion in your voice because he asks almost immediately;

_“Did the mail come in?”_

_“Yes!”_ You heft the package in your arms up to the work table and break it open immediately, sifting through the assortment of materials until you find that which the is most precious to your experiment: silver wire. A more efficient conduit. _“We should have everything we need now. I can start construction immediately.”_ And you plan to. You skipped out on breakfast and you can’t remember the last time you got a full night’s worth of sleep, but all that is inconsequential in the face of such a breakthrough. You can almost feel that Nobel prize in your hands.

Maxwell’s voice rings out from behind you again, as you lay all the components for your machine out before you. _“Good work, pal. I knew I was right to count on you.”_ The compliment has you smiling even bigger than before, but it’s alright because it isn’t likely he can tell.

Truth be told Maxwell has come to you as a bit of a surprise as far as research partners go. There are very few people in the world you get along with well enough to have any sort of mental connection to, but the man on the other end of the radio; a voice you’ve never seen, seems to be one of them. That’s not to say you don’t argue. Maxwell’s methodology is atrocious, he seems to think you’re some kind of degenerate for having never learned to play a musical instrument (don’t lab instruments count?), and imagine your surprise when you discover that he has an affinity for parlor magic of all things! All the same, and despite all his oddities, the two of you do seem to have a connection of sorts. He understands you.

It’s not a bad thing. You never would have considered yourself to be a lonely person before any of this began. Annoyed maybe. Isolated. The fact of the matter was you simply worked on a different wavelength than most people around you, and there was only so many times you could explain your ideas to a dispassionate audience before you were moving clear out of your parent’s town to live in an undisclosed cabin in the woods. The idea of living a solitary life had never bothered you before now (you liked your privacy anyways), but in the recent nights it’s become hard to imagine how your attic could feel the same without the sound of his voice lilting through it. It’s a silly idea, because you don’t really know each other that well even though you’ve been working on this project together for weeks. He’s secretive, you can be too. You still don’t even truly know where he came from or if he’ll stick around once the machine is complete...

(Sometimes you don’t even know if he’s real or just a figment of your own crazed intellect.)

But you harbour it anyways. A single silly idea in your house in the woods, surrounded by logic and facts and equations. It’s harmless. One night, as you collapse in your chair for some much needed rest with your back stiff and your fingers blunted and bruised from tightening and untightening bolts, you even offer it as a suggestion. Maybe as a means of testing the machine once it’s finished you should set it to his coordinates.

Maxwell laughs at that one, magnetizing even through the static of the radio. You feel good about it, a warmth that rises in your chest as you rest your tired head against the back of your armchair.

_“Say, that’s not a bad idea. See you in the morning, Wilson.”_

With any luck you’d be able to finish construction tomorrow. After that it was just a simple (and admittedly apprehensive; was there really no substitute that could be used for blood?) procedure to set up its activation. It was going to work.

This invention was going to change lives.

 

It doesn’t quite hit you until later that night. No, well that’s not quite true. It hit you when dusk started to fall and the woods became dark and you found yourself scrambling for some wood to start a fire. It hit you then with flint in your hands hacking at the branches of a pine tree.

_You don’t have a clue where you are. You’re all alone. You could die out here._

Even earlier than that, it had hit you. When you flipped the switch on that infernal contraption and all at once everything had felt wrong, as if the electrons in very air around you were repelled. The way the machine (it was designed as a door but looked a lot like a face in the moment) shuddered to life, the sound of Maxwell’s laughter behind you… You knew in that moment what you had never wanted to entertain in the past.

 _This had been a mistake_.

But it doesn’t truly hit you until that night, while you’re huddled next to your tiny fire too scared to sleep and too tired to keep moving. It’s been a long day, and a hard day, and sometimes the human mind is remarkable. Because all day you haven’t had time to think about it; adrenaline pushing you to your feet and out to forage for clues, and shelter, and food to eat with such business-like appeal that you had let it take over completely. Night has fallen since then however, and you’ve got nothing left to do but sit and wait, and think. And of course there’s only one thing you can think about.

Maxwell’s voice had always sounded distorted on the radio. No fault of the radio’s, but it was always tinny and hollow as if you’d been talking through a telephone wire. A distant communication.

It hadn’t been like that this morning. You heard him before you’d woken up here. His voice in your head and behind your eyelids and closer, deeper than you’d ever heard it before. You already knew the truth of course, you put the facts together the moment something had grabbed you from beneath the floorboards of your home and everything had turned to shadow. But it didn’t _hit_ you until that night.

_“… He tricked you, Wilson.”_

Saying it out loud feels like breaking some kind of spell (not that you’re the type who believes in such things), and with adrenaline having run its course throughout the light of day all you’re left with is your emotions. They’re not pleasant ones. They’re hardly even coherent; ugly, and festering, and clawing their way out of your gut, and the first thing you can think to do in your outrage is pitch your handful of berries into the fire (you can’t really afford to be wasting food, but right now your temper easily outmatches your appetite). Because how could he do this to you?

Three months. It took three months to build that door together. To ship in the parts, to rewrite the blueprints, to put aside all the other projects you’d been working on that _could_ have ended up meaning something. Three solid months for your life, and the entire time all he had wanted was…

There had to be a way out of here. You weren’t going to give him the satisfaction of seeing you stuck here. He tricked you. How could he trick you?!

Dawn breaks sooner than you expect it to, stewing in your own misfortune. Rays of sunlight that filter over the tops of the trees and drive away the darkness. With them comes your own lack of direction. Everything look the same in the daylight, just an endless forest interspersed with meadow, and you’re not sure which way you should be going. Is there even a right way to go? You decide to follow the sun, heading east and collecting firewood and kindling, and whatever food you can find until you run into something of interest. After all, it’s not like you have a better plan, and there’s no one else around to provide commentary this time.

Admittedly, the sting of it is a little stronger than you know how to deal with.

 

You hate him, obviously. Not that you’ve seen him since you got here, but the random statues of him that litter the land are enough of a reminder. As are the hounds that sometimes chase you, and the tree that came to life and attacked you the other day, and the complete and utter void of any intelligent life whatsoever save for some underdeveloped pig men and your new walking pet chest. Of course you hate him. He’s the reason half the forest caught on fire in yesterday’s storm and burned all your berry bushes. He’s also the reason a full three days of rain has made an absolute mess out of your hair. So when you find that door again on a previously uncharted part of the island not only are you not in the mood for any more of his nonsense, you’re also not keen on making the same stupid mistake again.

The door’s got Maxwell all over it. Quite literally; it’s called Maxwell’s Door, and you can feel your face heating up just looking at the accursed thing. Because you hate him.

Overall, it looks the same as it had that final night in your attic, seemingly untouched by the hazardous wilderness it’s found itself in. You can feel the scowl that pulls at your lips as you turn away from it resolutely, leaving the entire area unexplored.

You’re not falling for that again. You tell yourself this for a solid week back at your camp in between checking your traps, and tending your farms, and building some kind of hat based science machine out of want to busy your mind more than anything else (it has such a stupid name). You’re definitely not falling for it. You know what that door is, you know what it does; you’re the one who built it! And Maxwell’s not going to get one over on you like that again no matter what his stupid world shoves in your face. You’re better than that. You’ll find a way out of here on your own.

But…

You’re a man of science. The door, of course, represents an untested variable. It can’t be the way out, you think. It can’t be that simple. Yet it was the way _in_ , and as the weather starts to cool again the idea of spending another frozen winter shuddering beside an empty fire pit becomes less and less appealing. You’re no closer on your own solution to getting out of here, frustratingly, but there’s always Maxwell and his damn door, and as time passes it starts to occur to you that maybe it _is_ that simple. Even if you don’t want it to be.

So you gather your supplies, and you finish your meal, and you and Chester walk past the swamps and beyond the walrus camp and south of those killer bee swarms to the clearing in the woods where the door lies. He’s not going to get you again this time. He can’t. You know his tricks, and you can’t even stand the thought of him.

Gritting your teeth you activate the door, and to your chagrin it feels much the same as the last time. Your stomach drops as those shadows spring from the ground, grabbing at your legs, your hands, your waist. Confusion overwhelms your mind and cuts your vision black as they drag you straight down and through the earth, across some plane of dimension you had never thought to comprehend existed. Idly, you start to wonder if it’s still your blood that’s being used to power the machine. You don’t think you’ll ever manage to stay conscious through the endeavor.

 

_“Oh, you finally used my portal did you? Took you long enough, Higgsbury. Hmm. Let’s try something a little more challenging, shall we?”_

You missed hearing his voice more than you thought you could have. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you don’t equally hate him for sending you to yet another world of constant rain and darkness.

The human mind is remarkable that way.


	2. It's a Coincidence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the second chapter! And closing off what was basically an exercise for me in wrapping my head around this ship. I really loved writing this, would love to write more in the future i think.

The frost gets to you before anything else, and you’d curse it out if you could. You can’t, obviously. Not when you won’t risk opening your mouth for how hard you’ve been clenching your jaw – not when your head is pounding and shaking behind your eyes. The cold is a relentless pursuer, it pierces through your skin and rubs your hands raw. Then it comes for your joints, and your breath, and your straining heart next. It’s not quite how you pictured things going when you woke up here. Your vision is swimming by the time you fall to the ice and getting up again, uncurling from where your knees are pressed to your chest, feels like a herculean task.

But you don’t have a choice in the matter, of course. Not if you want to survive. You already made your choice when you went back to that door, and this is where you’ve been sent for it. When will you learn?

You have made so many bad choices this time through.

The first time he killed you, you didn’t go near the door again for a full two seasons, swearing off adventure in the name of the dogs that had ended yours. But aversion tactics didn’t solve anything like you hoped they might. You couldn’t rebuild a replica of the Wooden Thing with nothing more than a memory of its component parts to prototype, and for all that was worth you weren’t even sure what the device did anyways.

(It was Maxwell’s though. You knew that. Which meant you probably also knew that it was _evil_ as much as you knew that you had to find it.)

Unfortunately your own research wasn’t faring much better either. Even with your knowledge of the door and the divining rod there were still too many variables left unaccounted for. And the hounds… the hounds didn’t stop coming. They were his too, and they were also evil. Each time there was more of them; they would hunt you down, and gnash their jaws, and if you happened to close your eyes during the endeavor all you could see was the hard point of their teeth as they tore through your skin. They never got the chance again. You learned to fight them, figured out how to make traps out of their own fangs, and corral them into the tentacle masses in the swamps, and in time you even learned how to stop shaking when you heard their snarling howls. More important to just keep moving forward. After a long winter you had conquered your fear by force. Your camp began to look like something of a stronghold, and you could have stayed there – you could have stayed safe.

You went back to the door and tried again.

The second time he killed you, you jumped back up against that door almost immediately, fists up as soon as you could move them again and pounding against the dark wood until they were flushed and beating like the pulse behind your ears. You’d been so close this time! Just moments away from activating that wooden contraption when one of his horrible clockwork monsters had finally noticed you again past the chaos of your bee mines, cornered you against a marble pillar, and…

It still hurt long after your body had become whole again. You grit your teeth and activated the door once more. You weren’t going to give him the satisfaction.

The third time... He doesn’t kill you. He doesn’t send anything after you, and you don’t die at all actually. But you probably should have. You had eaten the wrong mushroom. Winter was hellish even at the best of times in this world, and you had been so cold and so, so tired. It had seemed like a good idea when it was the only edible thing you held between your frozen fingers, but it doesn’t even take a full hour before you are seeing spots. You collapse in the snow with your hands clutching your head and something red and pulsing and _painful_ behind your eyelids. Distantly, you know you are going to die again. It seems inevitable; you can’t get up, you can’t get warm, you can’t even open your eyes. It’s only a matter of time before something comes for you again. You know that they’re closing in, you can hear the shadows stalking you, chasing you – they’re going to find you.

Your hand strikes against something hard in the snow, and it takes a moment for your groggy mind to distinguish the shape of the object against the biting frost. Bone. It’s a bone, and you know you are going to die. Desperately you clutch at the frozen remains, pulling it towards your chest like a lifeline -- an irony, a certainty. You wait for them to track you down once more. Chester finds you instead, and he licks your face and slobbers down your neck until you manage to push yourself up enough to pull the firewood out of your backpack. He cuddles up next to you and pants happily and keeps you warm by the fire until the worst of the tremors have passed. And when you look inside that gaping maw you find he is carrying two of the Things you’ve been searching for.

Two days later, you leave that icy wasteland. Not too long after that Maxwell lands you in a pitch black nightmare and you lose your mind again. You don’t die then either, but part of you (a rather large part) has started to wish you would.

But you’re passed all that now. At the end of the darkness (or the center? The bottom?), and there’s nothing more he can try and hit you with. No more monsters, no more shadows, no more traps or games; you’re at the closing end of things now, it’s over. And you’re so tired.

You are both so tired.

Maxwell looks… Well, he asked if it is what you’ve been expecting and it isn’t. It’s ghastly. For so long now he’s been the demon who trapped you here. The one who’d tricked you, the one who’d killed you, the one who wouldn’t allow you to just stay away from him. You hate him, you really do, but now you’ve finally found him and it’s _not the same_. Not even his voice is the same. It sounds so bitter and drained compared to how you used to remember it, before he’d pulled you into this, before he’d started throwing a fit because you kept surviving, and you don’t—You weren’t expecting this.

But it doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t change what’s happened, or how much you dislike him, or what’s going to happen next. It shouldn’t rightly change a thing. You’re exhausted, and you’re done playing, and a part of you (a rather large part) still wants nothing more than to sock that man across his prominent jawline. How unfortunate then is it that you’re also so naturally curious. The throne, the gramophone, the portals between identical worlds, and even Maxwell himself; you need to understand.

He gives you your explanation. And standing in the darkness, surrounded by the dust, and the whispers, and what you now know to be Them you come to realise that this isn’t really Maxwell’s game after all; it’s Theirs.

(But that doesn’t mean he had to play it. That doesn’t mean he had to trap _you_ here!)

It’s not fair. Generally speaking you don’t tend to think in terms of what’s fair or not, but your head is aching, and body is bruised and sore, and this is definitely well beyond the realm of anything that could be considered fair. You don’t deserve this, and you hate him.

_“Go on, stay awhile. Or put they key in the box. It’s your decision.”_

If it was even possible you hate him more after he hands the ultimatum down to you. Stay here or set him free. Neither option in an appealing one. Stay and you’re stuck in the nothingness with Maxwell for the foreseeable future, let him go and… Well, after everything he’s forced you through doesn’t it seem right that he should be trapped in return? Imprisoned on a chair in the world he thought he ruled. It was fitting, wasn’t it? It was just. No matter how long he’d been here, or what They did to him, or how dead he looked and sounded and felt.

(And it wasn’t your issue. It really wasn’t your problem to deal with. You didn’t even know him.)

You don’t take the time to truly think about it in the end. You can’t let yourself. Time isn’t on your side right now; time would cause you to falter, it would give _him_ the chance to intervene, and you don’t want time. You want things over with now. You’ve never felt so tired.

Besides, he said it himself anyways: the game is over. He’s done toying with you. And you… you just want to be done with him. This.

In just a few heavy steps you march towards the throne and pop the key in the lock. Your eyes are on Maxwell, they burn and sting around the lids and you forward it all into a stubborn glare. The words tumble out of your mouth unprompted.

_“You don’t deserve this.”_

Maxwell watches you carefully, attentive even as the shadows smother him. He rolls his shoulders; the throne isn’t so restrictive as to disallow a shrug.

 _“Fair enough,”_ he responds.

There is only one real choice to make. You swallow hard, turn the key once in its lock, and wait with baited breath.

To be fair, you’ve come to expect some sort of disaster by now when you activate anything in this world, but when Maxwell crumbles to dust before you, you find that you can only stare in shock. Some might have felt a little triumphant about that, and rightfully so – it wasn’t more than he was owed after all – but all you can do is stare. It has become senseless, the amount of things that die here.

You feel cold.

When They spring out of the shadows to claw and clutch at you, it’s nothing the same as it had been when you were moving from world to world. They’re so cold, and so angry, and They slice into your flesh and freeze the air in your lungs before you can so much as gasp. All you feel is terror.

Too late do your instincts kick in. They drag you to the throne struggling but force you to your seat all the same. Fear paralyzes your mind and They crowd your vision hungrily – furiously.

You made a horrible mistake. You shouldn’t have done that.

_Did he just trick you again?_

 

You do get the chance to punch him later when he shows up at your camp. It puts a big yellow bruise on the side of his jaw for the better part of a week, and even though you decide on a truce following a few days of terse stalemate seeing it still gives you a sense of satisfaction. Maybe because you put it there yourself this time. He deserves it anyways.

Truth be told, Maxwell has come to you as a bit of a surprise since you began working together once more. He’s made a habit for himself in the worst of ways for being surprising, and you know that it’s not something you can trust but… you never quite suspected that you would be able to have this again either. The feeling of working alongside a likeminded individual – to reach towards new innovations and share in ideas with someone who really understands you (and for better or for worse that fact is still true). You’re doing _science_ again, not just scavenging through the wilderness in a desperate effort to survive, and the fact of it is almost enough to make you feel normal.

And you missed it. All of it. You had.

That’s not to say that you don’t still hate him – or, for that matter, that he doesn’t equally dislike you. This is a truce and nothing more, united only for a common goal against a new darkness. It’s more practical than anything, really. Sure enough, you could finalize and construct the portal on your own as you had been planning, but progress on it had been so _slow_ (slow enough that you’d kept convincing yourself to go back to that damn door) and Maxwell’s improvements upon your design with that book of his haven’t been completely terrible.

He hasn’t been completely terrible.

He’s looking at your blueprints now, over a handful of berries, and pauses to squint at the paper shifting it slightly.

_“Say, did you change something on here?”_

_“Yes.”_ You don’t look up from where you’ve been attempting to rearrange clockwork gears into a functional circuit. Every time he stops to question your methods it makes you tense, not just because you don’t trust him, but also because he’s correct in doing so more often than you’d prefer. You’re rather sick of him being right about things when you know you know better. But then again, you always had argued quite a bit, even when you’d been back home in your attic.

(That’s part of the problem. Things too easily feel too familiar to how they had in the past).

_“Why?”_

When you finally do look up you find Maxwell’s full lips are pulled into a frown as he searches your drawings. With a huff you pull yourself away from the warmth beside the fire pit’s embers to regard your own plans. It’s different now that there’s no radio between you. You’re aware, almost acutely, of every little movement he makes, and when you kneel down to jab your finger against a part of the blueprint you can feel how close he is across from you. You can’t trust him.

 _“Here.”_ Eyes on the blueprint. You’re focused only on the machine and nothing more _. “I decided we needed a stronger point of focus, so I swapped the gem out for a proper lens.”_ Not your first choice you could admit, but the fact is that it’s a genius idea; it’s just not a convenient one.

Maxwell follows the direction of your finger to the eye you’ve scribbled in above the portal. When he touches your arm to direct your attention you nearly flinch away from it. But it’s only because you’re not expecting it. It’s only because his hands still manage to remain cold even with gloves on.

 _“I assume you’re thinking of a tallbird, right?”_ His question sounds cautious rather than critical for once, and you realize that he must understand the size of the lens that you’ll be needing to properly pull this off.

Which means this is going to devolve into another argument.

Scrubbing your hand through the hairs on your chin (you really do need to shave, but winter is on its way and you’ll take all the insulation you can get) you try your best to break the news gently. Because it’s a good plan, even if it’s not going to sound as such. Sometimes you have to take risks in the name of science.

 _“I was,”_ you admit _. “Until I realized how difficult it is to extract their eyes whole. It won’t work with a tallbird.”_

You never said it was the greatest alternative in the world – just the one that would actually work – but you’re also not the one who _trapped_ the both of you here without means of escape or rescue. In truth, all you’ve done is find a way to make use of the natural materials that Maxwell has provided for you, so really there’s only one person worth blaming.

But of course you expect the dismissive tone when Maxwell finally does respond. He’s not even looking at you anymore, choosing instead to pop the last of his berries into his mouth as if he were still untouchable in this world.

_“Good luck with that one, pal. I’m not fighting that thing.”_

Instantly, you’re annoyed. You knew it was coming. You knew he was going to say something to put you on the defensive, but you’re there all the same – like a game you don’t quite know the rules to but can’t stop playing.

Perhaps neither of you can stop this. You clench your teeth behind closed lips and throw a hand into the air in a resigned display of your indignation _. “I_ have _a plan,”_ you inform him. It’s irritating that he should think so little of you.

This time Maxwell smirks at you. His fingers twitch like he wants something between them, and if you weren’t so hyperaware of everything he did in _your_ camp you would have left to collect materials for the day already.

 _“Yes, I’ve seen your plans.”_ His voice is still smooth and rich and _close_ as he mocks you, and nothing could stoke your temper faster. He must love making an enemy out of himself. _“You’re going to get yourself killed.”_

Well it wouldn’t be the first time.

 _“No, I’m going to get us both killed.”_ Fire finds you crossing the blueprint that separated you so that you can contest his criticisms in the most gentlemanly way you know how. By shouting. Maxwell leans back fluidly, as if you avoid your outburst entirely, but it only really succeeds in drawing you closer together. In the moment you don’t particularly care, one form of tension is much the same as the next.

 _“Don’t think that you can get out of this that easily!”_   Your accusations match the pace of your rapidly gesticulating hands as you jab a finger first at Maxwell and then extend it to the rest of your camp. Your inventions, your traps, and the walls you’ve built to try to keep yourself protected. _“You wanted to stay, well you’re stuck here now, and this is our best bet!”_

He’s not going to get away with pushing the onus onto you again. Not so long as you have will left to protest (and that is something that has stood in the face of countless trials).

So it’s familiar to work together once more. But in so many other ways it has become entirely different as well. Maxwell’s not who you had thought him to be back then and you have more than a few lifetimes of reasons built up now not to trust him. You know better than to let your guard down around him, you know well enough to keep your mind sharp.

He surprises you anyways that night over the necessary but always modest fire while he deftly weaves old grass into new ropes and you wrack your brain trying to come up with a better solution for a lens than the deerclops (you're not saying that he's right, but maybe he's not _wrong._ )

It must be something he’s been thinking about awhile, because you haven’t spoken about the portal since your argument earlier, and truth be told you’re rather reticent to bring it up again. But he does:

_"Try not to do anything reckless when we fight that thing.”_

A warmth that rises up in your chest. Internally you do your best to strangle it with cold hands before it can betray anything by your face.

It’s not going to carry out the same way this time around no matter what this stupid world sends after you. You know what he’s capable of and you’ve seen the tricks he carries up his sleeves: they’re not that great. You’re not going to fall for him again.

(Or that’s what you’ve been telling yourself at least.)

It’s really not as simple as it ought to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The jury rigged portal has a deerclops eye in it. Don't think i didn't pick up on that, as i notice and fear all things that have to do with the deerclops always.  
> What else could it be??


End file.
